a personal reaction to MARRIAGE EQUALITY
26 May 2009 5:43 pm by tony
http://www.tuesdaysblog.com/2009/05/at-home-in-crowd-of-thousands.html
this is not breaking news. it’s not a scoop or even a terribly radical opinion.
it’s just something i wanted to share. especially today, after the california supreme court decision on prop 8.
it’s a blog post written after the recent RALLY FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY in new york city:
At Home in a Crowd of Thousands
This post was submitted by tony.
No tags for this post.
Touching and beautiful and so appropriate for today.
Tony, that was such a wonderful piece.
Please remember this vile proposition was passed by a very small number of people. Know that the majority of us whitebread straight people find discrimination against gays as reprehensible as segregation.
It may end up being a fight as difficult as segregation, but don’t give up hope. There’s a lot of us behind you and we’re getting fed up with our country being held hostage by backwards, hating insecure people.
You will overcome. Crap like Prop 8 will be repealed.
This captures what I was trying to say better than I could:
http://tinyurl.com/ptxj9z
some of my favorite people are whitebread straights.
I live in an utterly vanilla subdivision full of kids and soccer Moms and guys who view their lawns like validation of their penis size.
NONE of us could imagine having our block party without our flamboyant gay couple from up the street. They’re utterly equal in everyone’s eyes. And yes, that includes the crazy religious home schooling family we call the Flanders.
The people are voted for this are dinosaurs. Maybe it is like racism, we just have to wait for them to die.
Tony
Heart wrenching …
Achingly beautiful.
Thank you and God bless you
justlen, while I know quite a few of those ‘dinosaurs’ – let us not forget the actual group that passed that measure – and they are not the old rightwing whites. According to the polls, the group that overwhelmingly voted anti-gay were the CA Blacks who came out in unusually large numbers due to the presidential candidate. If that vote were taken again today in an ‘off-election’, I have serious doubts as to its passing.
Pmichael
I agree with that.
Tony, that was just plain beautiful. From a mother of a gay male, I loved reading your blog. My son and his partner live in SF and I flew out to visit them a few years back. Never had a better time in my life. I have told my son not to give up on this. Hopefully when it’s put up for a vote again it will be defeated. Eventually I believe all states will allow same sex marriage.
Well, it’s blame the blacks happy hour, is it? The measure passed 52-48%. Blacks are approx. 6% of the voting population. And they accounted for 2.3% of the total vote. See: http://www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_10113.php
I’m sick of folks using Black people as scapegoats. Point me to any statistical analysis that demonstrates that the Black vote had a significant impact on the Prop 8 vote. And explain how the theory comports with the recent passage of a gay rights bill in DC, a majority black population.
This whole plaint reminds me of nothing so much as the contention that African-Americans were ingrates for not supporting Hillary over Obama. You know — Massa been good to y’all.
I am a supporter of equality for all. I fully support the effort for gay marriage, and believe it is a matter of time before it is the order of the day virtually everywhere. But legislative success is the predicate, just as it was with the 14th and 15th Amendments, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Get ‘er done, and quit blaming others.
pmichael says:
26 May 2009 at 6:25 pm
justlen, while I know quite a few of those ‘dinosaurs’ – let us not forget the actual group that passed that measure – and they are not the old rightwing whites. According to the polls, the group that overwhelmingly voted anti-gay were the CA Blacks
____
PURE BS, NOT backed up by stats, pmichael
give me the poll you’re referring to PM. It must be “insta-exit polling” that was subsequently proven inaccurate.
More current is:
FRIDAY, JAN. 9, 2009 17:00 EST
Don’t blame Proposition 8 on African-Americans
In their statistical analysis, Egan and Sherrill found that the exit polls dramatically overstated African-American support for Proposition 8. According to the two professors, 58 percent of African-Americans voted for the measure. By comparison, 59 percent of Latinos and Hispanics supported it, along with 49 percent of whites and 48 percent of Asians.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/01/09/race_prop8/
Here’s the Survey USA poll that most people cite to for the faulty proposition that blacks had an outsize influence on the outcome of Prop 8: http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=0d4fd538-5834-4c18-98c8-6e58da254976
It shows that 58% of blacks supported Prop 8, higher than any other ethnic group. This is the source of the argument, as far as I can tell. But take a closer look. The poll says the percentage of likely black voters is 6%. Elementary math tells us that blacks contributed .06*.58 = approx. 3.5%. That’s assuming blacks voted in the same proportion as expected; the numbers cited above are lower.
In contrast, whites supported the measure by 48%, and they comprised 59% of likely voters. Which means that, if they voted as predicted, they contributed .48*.59 = 28%, or over 7 times the Black percentage vote.
Oh no, GeoT — not statistical analysis!!!! Didn’t you get the memo that half-assed opinions are what count, not facts?
If we want to assign blame, it belongs to both the in- and out-of-state organized hate groups (mormons and other religions etc)who are busy pushing their “perfect” morals off on everyone else.
According to the two professors, 58 percent of African-Americans voted for the measure. By comparison, 59 percent of Latinos and Hispanics supported it, along with 49 percent of whites and 48 percent of Asians.
________
one stat that stands out the most to me:
The Vote on Proposition 8
(Women are 46% of total CA population) Voted Yes on 8: Men 54%
(Men are 54% of total CA population) Voted Yes on 8: Women 49%
Here’s the pdf. of the actual study:
California’s Proposition 8:
What Happened, and What Does the Future Hold?
Patrick J. Egan
New York University
Kenneth Sherrill
Hunter College-CUNY
Commissioned by the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund
in San Francisco.
Released under the auspices of the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute.
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/issues/egan_sherrill_prop8_1_6_09.pdf
AliceP says:
26 May 2009 at 9:24 pm
If we want to assign blame, it belongs to both the in- and out-of-state organized hate groups (mormons and other religions etc)who are busy pushing their “perfect” morals off on everyone else.
____
I agree. The ad campaigns were deceptive beyond belief. The vote was not an honest reflection of the will of the people. IMO
ogenec says:
26 May 2009 at 9:21 pm
Oh no, GeoT — not statistical analysis!!!! Didn’t you get the memo that half-assed opinions are what count, not facts?
_____
I did get that memo but decided it was not factually accurate
correction:
The Vote on Proposition 8
(Men are 46% of total CA population) Voted Yes on 8: Men 54%
(Women are 54% of total CA population) Voted Yes on 8: Women 49%
I am one who says it doesn’t matter. The fact is that it won. I don’t care if they were black, white, brown, purple, whatever, the fact is that it won and that alone bothers me. I don’t blame ogenec for being upset because there’s no way of really knowing who the majority people were. Okay, you can say exit polls, but they proved wrong back in NH.
Betsy says:
26 May 2009 at 9:43 pm
I am one who says it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if they were black, white, brown, purple,
___
I blame it all on the Purples!
p.s. GO LAKERS!
LOL GeoT
ogenec says:
26 May 2009 at 9:15 pm
ogenec says:
26 May 2009 at 8:55 pm
You’re correct on this. I think the media promoted the idea of Blacks being the critical element in passing Prop. 8 when, indeed, they were only a small percentage of the total voters to begin with (the last part they obviously left out). The Blacks
are a relatively small voting block in California, compared to Whites and Latinos. And I agree with you that legislative success is the predicate as you point out in your examples. Seems like these propositions are getting out of hand.
hey. y’all.
i think you should go back and read the original post that i wanted to share.
x
t.
appreciation the more current info, GeoT. But my point was not to ‘blame’ any one group but merely to point out there were some strange circumstances surrounding that vote – that would be different today. How else can one explain CA voting this way while ultra-conservative Iowa did not?
The real ‘enemy’ within this subject is *ignorance*. These questions will never be solved as long as the concept ‘you can Catch Gay’ isn’t eliminated. The fears of parents when they were told their kids would be ‘taught’ Gay in school underline this. If one is ‘born’ gay – telling children about it shouldn’t be anything to worry about.
Well I for one think you CAN blame it one one group…the IDIOTS!
pmichael says:
27 May 2009 at 2:00 am
How else can one explain CA voting this way while ultra-conservative Iowa did not?
___
Totally different process. The Iowa legislature passed a law on April 27, 2009. California was a statewide Proposition amended (changed) the State Constitution.
You can’t compare the two. No one knows how a statewide vote would have turned out in Iowa.
GeoT – but we do know what Vermont, Maine, and soon New York appear to be doing. I believe the CA vote was the shock of the decade for most people. Not sure why you’re resisting that.
My original point was simply that it took a collection of odd circumstances for what most would consider to be one of the most ‘liberal’ (“left coast” *L*) of states to have that vote come out the way it did. I simply attempted to identify a couple of them – and to say I do not believe the same result would occur today.
pmichael says:
27 May 2009 at 9:30 am
GeoT – but we do know what Vermont, Maine, and soon New York appear to be doing. I believe the CA vote was the shock of the decade for most people. Not sure why you’re resisting that.
______
no resistance from me, I voted NO on Prop 8. I’m just encouraging you to be on firm ground when you make a statement like:
” According to the polls, the group that overwhelmingly voted anti-gay were the CA Blacks who came out in unusually large numbers due to the presidential candidate”
as it turns out that’s largely a misstatement of what actually happened.
What happens in California doesn’t surprise me, ever. We voted for and gave the world both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. How’s that for a dynamic duo?
tony says:
27 May 2009 at 12:51 am
Well, that went unheeded.
According to what I read in the study as well as statement by the principle investigators, that is not necessarily true. AGAIN, THIS HAS NOT A THING TO DO WITH PLACING BLAME. It is about going forward in a way that gets us where we want to go.
Tony,
Your post reminded me of two guys that were doing some decorating work in our home years ago. We had met them through a gay friend. They were openly gay as well.
They were always late to arrive, and very late to leave. It would be as late as 10:00 pm and they’d still be working and visiting. Finally, one evening they told us that they so enjoyed visiting with a family that did not judge them and where they could feel comfortable being who they are. One of them explained, it gets kind of lonely when you can only search out other gay friends to feel safe.
It was one of the saddest things I have ever heard.
Tony,
Your post was very moving. And peace to everyone here – you are all very thoughtful and have lots to offer.
djjl says:
27 May 2009 at 3:10 pm
And DADT – you can die for your country, but you have to lie to everyone around you about who you really are.
Without marriage/federal benefits – you can build a life with someone you love, but have no access to survivor’s benefits, like social security, or pension benefits without income taxes being withdrawn.
There are lots of eldery gay people who are lonely and impoverished. Some retirement centers/nursing homes are hostile to gays – it’s not illegal.
I know AliceP. It’s just not right. I don’t know where all this arrogance and intolerance comes from. I was always taught to put myself in the other guy’s shoes. I do believe things are going to change for the better but it may not come all at once.